A butterfly with wings that extended at least a foot each was seen flying out of a raging fire and it moved around Liara causing her to feel warmth and peace. She reached out towards it and the butterfly fluttered against her softly as a sweet sound came out of it ... the sound made her think of that pretty human music and she started to laugh as she ran with it following her ... Liara had never seen anything as beautiful with its brightly colored wings and they left gold and green dust on her as it fluttered about. She loved how it almost mirrored her movements and so she began to sway ... it swayed.
As Liara and the butterfly danced about each other she suddenly heard her mother call out to her, "Liara? Daughter, bring it to me."
"Mother?" She looked around until she saw the Matriarch off in the distance standing on a black mound. The mound seemed to breathe below her ... black oil bubbling around it but the Matriarch did not seem to notice it. She was completely focused on the butterfly.
The matriarch pulled her eyes off the butterfly and looked at Liara with a cold smile ..."Liara, do not be afraid ... just bring it to me softly."
"Mother, isn't it beautiful?" She smiled back as the butterfly moved behind her and away from the Matriarch, "Can I keep it?"
"No, Liara ... it is dangerous." The Matriarch's smile vanished, "It will spoil you ... defile you. You must bring it to me so that it can be silenced. So you can be safe from its lies."
Liara looked at it and didn't understand. It was beautiful and as it moved closer to her she felt such a joy. "But mother ... it won't harm me. Don't you see how wonderful it is?"
"Liara, do not question me," the Matriarch had answered, her face turning angry and dark. "Bring it to me ... It must die!"
Liara was confused as she looked at it and back at her mother. It did not feel wicked ... it made her feel at peace. But she could not disobey her mother ... she could not disobey the Matriarch so she began to walk slowly towards her mother leading the butterfly along the way. "Mother, please don't hurt it. If you would just look at it ... can't you see how peaceful it is?"
"Just bring it closer, daughter."
Liara hesitated but then started moving slowly again and just as the butterfly was within the Matriarch's reach ... she pulled out a large yellow snake which scared Liara, "Mother!"
The Matriarch stood still as she coldly instructed her daughter, "Do not move Liara!" as the snake slithered through her hands.
As it went racing towards the butterfly, Liara felt her heart beat harder and she moved in-between the snake and the butterfly begging her mother to spare it ... To spare the butterfly and kill the snake in its place. "Please mother!"
"Liara! You must trust me ... this butterfly must die!"
Just as the snake raised its head and opened its mouth to eat the butterfly ... Liara screamed and then it ... and then it ... Liara came awake with a start.
Why are you dreaming about human insects and reptiles and mother? Liara thought as she discovered tears running down her cheeks. As she wiped them on her sheets she sat up on her cot and her mind quickly went to the 4 humans not far in the campground and frowned. Of course, that must be why.
She got up and looked at the time ... It was at least two hours before the team would get up but Liara, drenched in sweat, already out of her cot and still slightly shaken by the dream went to take a cold shower. Before she had left her tent, she had peeked out to see if the humans were around and once she felt sure that they were also still in their tents, she stepped quietly out and headed for the shower.
Zazzy got up as she was showering and put on breakfast ... he loved his friend but hated her cooking. Bleh! While Liara came from the very affluent, Zazzy did not have the pedigree needed to be worthy of mating back home on Rannadril and had very few friends but he had clicked with Liara almost from the start. They were an odd couple but somehow their friendship had worked. She was smarter than anyone that he had ever known and she had actually beaten him a few times at chess ... no one had ever done that before. Now as he cooked he heard his friend humming off in the distance and it made him smile. She had promised to take him to Serrice and let him actually sit in a box seat while watching the Serrice Delphinus play in their stadium! Him!Yes! He couldn't wait.
Once towel-dried, Liara got dressed and then poured herself a glass of cold water before heading back to her tent. On her way back she was surprised to see her friend already up and cooking. "Zazzy! It is too early for breakfast."
"Not too early," Zazzy frowned. "Breakfast should be eaten upon awakening. You awake. I awake. Breakfast."
"But Tila and Vesta aren't up yet," she scolded him.
"Then they starve." he answered as he made her plate. "Not my fault."
Liara shook her head at him as she took the plate and went over to a table, "You realize that they will be upset, don't you?"
Zazzy joined her as he sat across from her, ignoring the question, "Reports show weather to be excellent."
It was already heating up causing Liara to wonder what the heat must be like on his home planet. "You think this weather is excellent?"
"Sarcasm." Zazzy bit into his salarian version of a vege-pancake. Zazzy had seen some salarians eating eggs and it upset him ... "savages" he had called them in front of Liara. She had decided it was probably not wise to confess that she loved eggs as well so she just kept quiet and didn't eat them around him ... ever.
"Of course." Liara hated it when she failed to get a joke. That happened much more than she liked but ... what was one to do? "Zazzy, do you ever have nightmares?"
Zazzy began to tell her about a nightmare of flies, naked volus and eggs and she quickly regretted asking him.
The two ate breakfast, talking about skyball, the box seats and where they were located ... as well as the time that the Matriarch had taken Liara to meet the greatest player of all time ... Marcella T'Loak. Liara had told him that story at least twenty times but he loved it! "Shame that she retired."
"A shame." Liara frowned. "The Matriarch still attends functions that has her in attendance as well but ... I do not attend those."
"We will crash." Zazzy bounced on his seat and that caused Liara to laugh. She knew that he would but she wouldn't.
After breakfast and explaining to Zazzy why "crashing" asari functions was suicide she returned to her tent and while sitting at her small compact desk flipped open her netpad to check her messages. The main feed had late-breaking news regarding the human planet called Mindoir. It was currently under attack by batarians but Liara barely gave the headline a second glance or the planet a second thought as she closed the feed and opened her messages.
She quickly deleted the spam e-mails then focused on the messages from Sibila, Theia Tatiaria and eight from her Thessia Guildhall colleagues. Once finished with them she looked at the one unopened message. A communication from the Matriarch. She always opened her mother's e-mail last since she would re-read it multiple times making sure that she understood everything the Matriarch was trying tell her. As she began eating a sokolatí sweet she began reading …
LIARA,
SENDING MY DEEPEST THOUGHTS TO YOU. ACOLYTES ALL WANT TO SEND THEIR BLESSINGS AS WELL. TO BE HONEST THEY WISH THAT YOU WERE HERE. PROTECT YOUR EYES IN THE CAVERN PLEASE. DO NOT BE SO CARELESS AS LAST TIME AND NEED MEDICAL ATTENTION DUE TO DUST IN YOUR EYES. NOT THAT I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU HOW TO DO YOUR WORK. SEND ME VISUALS OF THE WALL 1ST CHANCE YOU GET. BACK UP YOUR RESEARCH IN CASE YOU LOSE THE NETPAD LIKE LAST YEAR.
MATRIARCH BENEZIA
Liara had frowned while reading the message, but also glad that her mother was once again a part of her life. Yes, she would always have words of instruction for her but Liara knew that she was blessed to have the Matriarch's time and wisdom shared with her. She then stared at the message again after digesting the top message. Correspondence from the Matriarch always included a secondary message and this was signed 'Matriarch Benezia' and not 'Mother' … so Liara looked at it again. "Always look for what stands out, Liara." The Matriarch had instructed her at a very young age. What stands out? Liara squinted and bit her bottom lip as she moved closer to the screen … Yes, "1st" … Liara excited, read the first word of ever sentence and then frowned, "As you wish, mother." Liara got up and stretched as she thought about her mother's instruction.
The T'Soni Tower located downtown in Armali had just seen the start of the work day when the Matriarch received an urgent call from the Councilor. She had arrived there for her annual board meeting when she was notified so she went into the security and communication center, where four commandos were working ... two monitoring both the T'Soni estate and the tower, while the other two were reading constant updates on galactic activities. These positions required a quick reflex, high level of critical thinking and acute observation. This had been Liara's next job in the T'Soni Company after her seven years in Lusia and she had excelled at it as Benezia knew she would.
Liara had loved the challenge of balancing all the screen data, organizing it and the task to determine what was important enough for each level of management. Benezia would give her feedback on her performance and showed her ways to see the truth through the noise of information. The Matriarch had wanted her daughter to work in as many areas of her dynasty so that she would understand the different functions and roles that would one day be under her care ... so that when she took over the company she had a clear understanding of what her employees did ... For almost three years Liara worked in that room content until ... a message mentioned the protheans and a wall that had just been uncovered on Aethoyner. She wished that images of the wall were available but it was being seen only by approved researchers ... it was then that she had decided to return to the University and study them.
Liara had become curious about the protheans after the history book that her mother had given her and hearing descriptions and the possibility of what the wall might reveal brought it all back. Liara worked an extra month before getting her nerve up to tell her mother and when she had half-whispered her resignation and the reason to the Matriarch ... Benezia had laughed and pulled her daughter close. "This is only natural, Liara. Daughters must set their own paths and this is done by rejecting the path that their mother is on." or the path that we try and put our daughters on, she thought to herself. While I push toward the future, you have turned to the past. "I am glad to see that you are following a natural course of development. I was beginning to worry that you did not have a will of your own."
Benezia's memory of her daughter faded as she looked at the image of Councilor Tevos. The Councilor was seated in her office and telling the Matriarch, "We just received word a few short hours ago of the attack."
"Hours?" Benezia did not like information delayed.
"I met with the human Ambassador Anita Goyle to get a complete update before taking up some of your time, Matriarch."
Benezia did not like this turn of event and quickly thought of where her daughter was located. The acolytes should be arriving there soon. "And?"
Tevos explained how the batarians came out of nowhere and that they had come well prepared. The Alliance had only been 14 hours away but upon sending in ground troops, the marines were quickly pinned in. More Alliance ships were enroute but they were just under 96 hours out and by then both the Matriarch and Councilor knew that the raid would be over.
Benezia began rubbing her temples as she took in everything that she had been told. "What is the population?"
"Last census there was 16,000 colonists and another 5,000 employees and their families attached to the Mindoir Nokeic Mining Company. The mining company and area was said to be the first and hardest hit … all humans in that area are presumed dead by the Alliance. This is based on satellite pictures of the area."
Benezia could feel her stomach tighten and thought, they must have determined that this part of Mindoir, these miners had the strength to challenge them and therefore needed to be removed at the start. "Hmmm, weapons, lasers, explosives, strong humans, places to hide … smart tactical move."
"Your sources were correct," Tevos said. "Mindoir was the next target."
"As my sources always are … and you are sure that your informant met with both the Councilor and the Alliance?" Benezia upon obtaining the plans to strike had forwarded them to the Councilor for distribution. The asari could not be seen as aligning with either the humans or batarians, so they had the information given by an outside source.
"Yes." Tevos sighed. "I have full knowledge of the exchanges."
As do I, Benezia thought as she lowered her head and said more to herself, "They gambled and paid a much larger price than they expected."
"Matriarch?"
"The humans … the political fools let the attack happen. They placed a ship close by so that when it started they could limit the deaths … the loss."
"Why would they do that?"
"A multitude of reasons" Benezia's stomach was hurting. She had seen this absolute disregard for life so many times in so many different species … "This was just one more decision based on greed, arrogance, pride." She sat down and one of the commandos brought her water. As she took a drink she looked at a screen that showed her great hall at home. "They would show how the Alliance can act quickly on off-worlds when threatened gaining confidence of the humans … confidence that would encourage their Earth citizens towards more colonization as well as additional funding for the Alliance."
"But why let the batarians land at all? Why not stop them before a human life was lost?" Tevos asked.
Benezia tapped her nails against the arm rest as she contemplated the reasons, "They might have allowed the initial loss so that they could use it to deepen the divide between them and the batarians ... as well as use it to try and push you and the Council as a whole into taking sides. So many reasons, yet none of them honorable."
"So many deaths … You would have thought that living such short life spans they would value life so much more than us." Tevos would never understand other species' no matter how hard she tried.
"They did not expect to lose as many as they will." Benezia said, feeling spiritually tired at the repeat of needless pain. "They had planned for their marines to take the situation quickly under control. Now, the citizens of Mindoir will pay for the political maneuvering and military arrogance of those that should have been protecting them … and I fear that the price will be higher than even we know."
Tevos lowered her head, "Such needless pain … suffering. May the Goddess help them."
Benezia thought of past wars that she had been in … the death, loss and pain of it all and she felt anger at what had been risked. "But this species is quite skilled at covering its mistakes. Their politicians and military powers past behaviors and thought processes have shown me that they will try and turn it to their advantage."
"And be successful at it," the Councilor chimed in. "On that note … what do I tell the Ambassador Goyle in her request of our assistance?"
"Tell her that we understand the pain that she must feel but that we cannot at this time take any steps to assist. The humans have placed themselves in areas that make them vulnerable and the Alliance … the human Alliance needs to take the steps necessary to protect their own colonists."
"What about the people on Mindoir? Do we not send assistance then?"
"No," Benezia answered. "To do so would be to take sides and potentially fan the flames of war in the eyes of the batarians. The humans, like our own daughters, must experience failure and pain to learn wisdom. It is my hope that the humans will learn from this and grow."
"The innocent lives…" Tevos almost whispered as she looked at the galactic map containing Mindoir on her desk.
"Councilor," the Matriarch held up her hand, "you must know that by the time we arrived it would be too late. With or without us sending help … whatever happens there it is going to play out as is. We cannot change that now. Only the strong and determined will make it out alive."